I just noticed this a few days ago.. I'm not sure what package upgrades could have caused this, but was wondering if anyone else is having this issue. I'm using in-kernel ALSA (not as a module). All of my alsa apps play fine, but if:

1) ALSA is in use - flash video (e.g. youtube) plays without sound for 2 seconds and stops. Other audio continues to play and mix fine.

or

2) ALSA is not in use - flash plays fine, but then all other audio results in:

figures they would close it on me because i don't feel like upgrading my kernel. if you're using a newer kernel and have the same problem, i would file a bug yourself... seeing as the alsa devs don't want to help me, i am masking alsa-* permanently. it's not what i wanted to do, but if they want to treat this like it's my fault, so be it.

I might also have this issue. I thought it had to do with firefox, but it might have been due to an alsa update. Even since I updated to firefox 3.0.11 (and now 3.5.x) I started having problems with flash and audio. I definitely experienced the youtube audio freezes. Typically just closing out firefox and restarting it will solve the issue. Now that I know it might be related to alsa, I'll experiment a bit more with the issue.

Since few months, if I keep firefox for few hours, then when I play something on youtube and others, the sounds get crappy [ eg it repeats the first half second 10 to 20 times and then do the same for an another half second 10 to 20 times and so on.

I noticed today that when sound is locked in firefox, sound still works in chromium, so I guess in my case that the problem is more related to firefox and not flash. These problems also seem to occur typically after suspending my machine...

I think the true fix here is abolishing ESD completely and making Ubuntu use ALSA plain (which works for many people) for everything. Then I could have the OS sounds (I want to hear the beautiful startup/shutdown sounds without ESD) and other nice stuff without all the hassle regarding the alsa-oss package, which only manages to make Firefox lock up whenever I try it.

My system is pure alsa -- no esd or pulseaudio. Every application has worked fine for years, until firefox earlier this year. I think I first started noticing the problems with the 3.0 branch around the same time 3.5 was released. I can't remember exactly which 3.0.x began the problems however.

I think the true fix here is abolishing ESD completely and making Ubuntu use ALSA plain (which works for many people) for everything.

On the other hand, I think the true fix is to ban spambots. I win. _________________Plants are pithy, brooks tend to babble--I'm content to lie between them.
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